Tuesday, September 16, 2008

At the start of this journey I was very aprehensive and doubted if I would be able to complete the exercises. I've always said that I found computers and what they had to offer a challenge. I'm thrilled to be at exercise 23 and suprised to have found most of it so enjoyable.My favourites exercises/sites were Image Chef, Facebook, Podcasts, You tube & I'm pleased to be able to upload photos now.Rollo was probably my least favourite and as mentioned in the blog at the time I got frustrated with not being able to do the RSS link on the podcasts (I plan to go back and try that again with the instructions that are now at the end of the exercises). I'm looking forward to trying Zoho more as it has so much to offer and I couldn't justify spending any more time exploring it while working through the exercises.I won't use all my new found skills again, some of them still daunt me, but... I know they are there and I know what is available. However some of the things I have learnt I will continue to use daily, simple things like G-mail, blogging - things I've been introduced to through this programme.The bouquet of flowers are for Kathy, Karen and Hantie for supervising this programme, and to Sarah, Paul and Lorinda who were happy to share their experiences with me. I'm off to make some comments on other peoples sites, I know how exciting it is to get a new comment! Thanks again - it's been great!

Monday, September 15, 2008

Initially when I went into some of the sites I was overwhelmed by the choice and the results when I typed in book titles. I decided to scale down my search and concentrate on children's titles. My first attempt in LibriVox looking for The Secret Garden brought up one hit. Alot less daunting! Next I searched for tiles under the authors name of Margaret Mahy but without any success. Likewise for Noel Streatfield, perhaps these authors are too recent (after 1940). I tried Anne of Green Gables and had success with 5 results.I liked the Kindle site, it was easy to use but it wasn't as successful for searching for Children's titles.

It was interesting to see how other libraries have used My Space. We are keen to utilise this tool for our Teenage borrowers. I think it seems non-threatening to borrowers who may feel self-concious or intimidated about coming into a library.My main concern if we do offer My Space to our borrowers is that we need sufficent staff to keep the site up to date. We currently struggle to keep up to date with recent book reviews on our kids pages so it isn't a service that we would be able to offer confidently. Hopefully with the appointment of a web team in the near future this could be an option.

Facebook is so addictive! I love that you can look up other peoples photos. I first started using it last Christmas when my children went to London and I could keep track of what they were doing by looking at the photos on their facebook pages.Having looked at my nephews site I keep telling my children that prospective employers are using it more and more to check on job applicants leisure activities to see if they are suitable employees. My nephew(by marriage) was shown in various stages of drunken undress and revealed more than I was keen to see! I notice that his page has since been removed, perhaps it was censored by the powers that be (or his parents)I enjoyed looking at Bebo and Myspace but Facebook is the winner with me.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

I enjoyed finding podcasts and listening to a podcast about Paula Ryan and Library Conference from last year but I just can't manage to find the RSS feed to any of them. I've joined Podcast Alley but again no luck. Once again it's meant that I've accessed another tool which is new to me and I'll now be able to talk about Podcasts with the best of them but I do feel frustrated that I haven't fulfilled what I set out to do. I've decided that I can't spend any more time trying to "pull the RSS feed . " I was hoping to be able to relax like the crocheted animal in the photo but I feel too frustrated to do so at the moment!

Sunday, September 7, 2008

I enjoyed the Library videos, it's hard to know if non-librarians would enjoy them or find them a bit twee? Being a keen watcher of the Amazing Race the Amazing 101 Library Challenge tickled my fancy, but viewers may find it a bit infuriating - a fine line.I also looked up video's on crochet as a comparison but they were probably some of the most boring videos I've ever seen,they made the library ones seem wonderful.I think there would be scope for us to have videos of Rhymetime on You Tube. It would let the borrowers see what is on offer for pre-schoolers at our libraries. We have some non english speaking adults that attend Rhymetime without children as an aid to learn english. I always think how bizarre that they probably can't speak enough english to ask for groceries but would be able to sing an entire line up of nursery rhymes and songs. A video of Rhymetime would cater for them as well.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

I liked the Color Blenber site that showed you different colours that worked together. It would be handy for matching colors for crocheting! However without a doubt my favourite site would have to be You Tube. I typed in Capping Show as one of my sons has been in it and I was pleased when the footage below showed up. My son is the pirate Captain, well worth a look!I didn't know how to save videos before so this has been a learning curve.

Just the name Zoho makes you smile! I loved some of the quirky bits about this site, especially the speech bubble for captions & the smiley faces with mixed emotions. I could spend ages on this - and plan to at a later date. I still have a few things to sort out but feel it will be very useful, and to think I didn't even know it existed. I will be singing it's virtues.

This is probably my least favourite site so-far. I don't think I've said that before? It amazes me that people with so much expertise should create such a boring looking site. Although it was good as far as the scope of sites it looked up originally I found alot of the hits were duplicated. Again I concentrated on crochet and the good thing about it was I saw sites that I'd never found before. I made my search roll about crochet under the title Zipperty crochet and was pleased that it limited the number of hits so I didn't feel swamped by the choice. One good thing about choosing the sites that you want to look at is that it also eliminates the sites you don't want to look at!Perhaps I was a bit harsh at the beginning, there are some good things about Rollyo afterall!